The longer I live, the more I am convinced that reality is so much more strange, and frequently hilarious, than any fiction:
According to Al Jazeera, prisoners at Guantanamo Bay were “tortured” with Sesame Street. Really. Prisoners reported to Al Jazeera that they had been forced to wear headphones playing music from Sesame Street on a continuous loop for days on end. Christopher Cerf, who composes for the show, was outraged. “My first reaction was this just can’t possibly be true,” he said. “Of course, I didn’t really like the idea that I was helping break down prisoners, but it was much worse when I heard later that they were actually using the music in Guantanamo to actually do deep, long-term interrogations and obviously to inflict enough pain on prisoners so they would talk.”
Go here to read the rest. Yeah, after a few days of listening to Big Bird sing, I’d be praying for death. This of course is a variant on my torture strategy for terrorists. Translate into Arabic the inteminable torture debate on Catholic blogs, and have endless readings from the debate piped into terrorist holding cells 24-7. I give the toughest terrorist a week before he cracks! The horror, the horror!
Update: TAC has received exclusive footage of the Sesame Street Torturers at Gitmo in action!
Torturing prisoners with the MUSIC from Sesame Street? I think they really wanted to play tapes of Elmo laughing and talking in his pronoun-challenged, puerile manner, but those have probably been banned by the Geneva Conventions….
I’d happily spend the rest of my life with Kermit, but not Miss Piggy.
They should have forced prisoners to watch Mr. Roger’s instead – not because it’s torture, but because after a few days, the terrorists will completely reform and willingly give up information.
May I suggest Mr Rogers?
In fact, forget torture and assign terminally cheerful sweater-clad
interrogatorsneighbors to “visit” prisoners all day every day.A huge plasma TV screen of Nancy Grace guilting them just with her arching and ebbing and arching again… eye brows…no words needed if they’ve seen her before. Though one must check the Geneva accords when one goes that far.
I think the Geneva Convention only bans use of Barney. You have to be really hard core to withstand Barney.
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And they chatted away/
At the mujahid picnic…
For an alternative torture method, see 5:30 (heck, just watch the whole clip, and you’ll learn a great way for dealing with hostage situations as well):
[…] Sesame Street Torture For Terrorists (The American Catholic) […]
Forcing someone to listen to the same sounds over and over is a form of torture. The choice of Sesame Street seems designed to allow folks to trivialize the reality involved.
Looks like it worked.
Thanks BA, for a while I was afraid that a self righteous torture scold would not appear in this humorous thread.
Forcing someone to listen to the same sounds over and over is a form of torture.
Then I’m totally bringing my former employers at the National Shrine gift shop and bookstore before the Hague.
Would it make me insane, or make me laugh so much I would talk (like can’t tickling be used as a form of torture) ? Oh no it’s Tickle Me Elmo.